Editor's note: This essay was first published
in the SJSU/CADRE Institute's SWITCH
journal in February 2002

When I was a child, my parents
took me to the Spring May Shows
at the local museums, which, at the
time, were the Akron Art Institute
and Cleveland Museum of Art in
Northeast Ohio, USA. These exhibitions
were popular showcases for
local talent, and were adjudicated
by the museum staff and regional
art faculty. As a matter of passing,
none of these shows exist in the
region at the turn of the millennium,
having been supplanted by
more profitable touring exhibitions
of works which are more popular
with the mainstream public.
Although I strained to look over the
platforms to see some of the works
in the shows as a child, I dimly
wondered about those who selected
the art in the gallery. [1] This
was probably the first inkling about
a curiosity that would evolve into
an erstwhile avocation from my primary
practice as a conceptual
artist, the exploration of art curation.
In the thirty or so years that I have
been experiencing the product of
curatorial practice, as well as the
decade or so in which I have been
involved in the process of curation,
the traditional models of this cultural
practice are being held circumspect
in light of the coming of various
media technologies. The traditional
model of curation, in its evolution
since the 17th Century, centers
itself around the 'expert' opinion
of the curator as educated connoisseur
and archivist of various
works. In so doing, the curator
determines the works' cultural
value, as well as, in present days,
their mass entertainment value,
which is equally important in the
era of ubiquitous free market
democracy (at least in most of the
Western world).

Multiple new models of curation have
evolved in stark contrast to the traditional
model that centers itself
around the expert opinion of the
curator. Independent curators are
utilizing alternative configurations of
gallery space or abandoning it
entirely, a rejection of the museum as
a monopolistic cultural producer.

An important aspect of the process of
curation and exhibition is the matrix of
power issues and legitimacy that arises
in the act of selection, organization
and archival. Traditionally, the legitimization
of the work or the institution
itself does not come from populist or
democratic impulses, but from oligarchic
materialist practices originated
with the birth of the museum. The
focus of the museum and the archival
of 'significant' cultural artifacts have
been determined by oligarchic hegemony
issuing forth from centers of
capitalist, academic, and political
power, and as such, the museum is
often termed a 'materialist cathedral.'
[2] Such imperatives are reflected in the names of various museums,
such as Whitney, Guggenheim, Getty,
Kimbell, and Walker. [3] The result of
this 'top-down' approach to culture
has resulted in the curator’s task of
thematically organizing bodies of
work, frequently with little collaborative interest in the material. But with
the advent of the Internet, the centrality
in the cultural production of the
museum is being called into question
by independent curators who are utilizing
alternative configurations of
gallery space or abandoning it entirely.
This resituation of the gallery as
problematic cultural space has been
foregrounded in many ways, including
the aforementioned elision of the
institution and the opening of the
curatorial process to allow for collaboration
as well as surrender of control
to the artists. The traditional structures
mentioned here of the curator
as centralized arbiter for the museum
are, by and large, not conducive
(although there are exceptions) to the
collaborative process between curator
and artist in shaping the nature of a
given exhibition. That is, unless a
given artist has reached such fame
and prestige that this artist may have
the ability to dictate parts of the exhibition
to the curator. One may question whether this is collaboration per
se, in that I would define it as the
process in which the artist and curator,
after the initial selection of work or
agreement to show, work in a process
that allows both to shape the final
outcome of the exhibition.
In the 1990s, the coming of the
Internet and other distributed media
has produced marked cultural effects
upon technological society and the
Western world. The primary effect
germane to this discussion is the 'levelling'
effect on society that the
Internet has had. [4] Although this is
not as prevalent as in the times up to
the late 90s when more intranets,
and even the Internet 2 initiative were
founded, the implication of Internet
culture is that, given the proper email
address, the average artist could
communicate with leading curators,
given that they had time or the desire
to read them. In addition, the advent
of the World Wide Web fostered in
many the sense of communal sharing
of cultural data, whether art, baby pictures,
or new essays, and so on. [5]
The materialist impulse of the museum
was brought into question with the
coming of net.art, although materialist
gallery practices are still extant.
Groups such as art collectives would
join in practice through the Internet
despite being in disparate locales.
And lastly, the rise of Internet culture,
in the proliferation of interactive works
and collaborations, questions the
nature of institutional boundaries and
the power relations, placing the
individuals who possess material in
contrast to those with intellectual legitimacy.
Such shifts (the changing of
capital, societal 'levelling') have
inspired many projects in which the
curators have entered a more interactive
process of collaboration with their
artists that is very different from the
traditional 'collaborations' evident in
the brick and mortar analogues of the
traditional museum.

Collaboration in
contemporary curatorial
practice
The collaborative model in contemporary
exhibitions has been more located
within the genre of net.art than
anywhere else, not surprising if one
considers the model of interaction
implied by distributed network culture.
Although not always held to, the ideal
prototype of the Internet community
was that of sharing and collaboration,
as popularized in the mass media by
early e-pundits, such as Barlow,
Rheingold, and Negroponte. The relatively
'flat,' rhizomatic, or egalitarian
social terrain of the early World Wide
Web made for an atmosphere where
savvy artists with even an elementary
knowledge of search engines and
access to the right trade magazines
could find the arts 'scene.' Online
forums were popular as components
of online exhibitions, such as the
Walker Art Center’s "Shock of the
View" [6] and "EATList" [7], which
almost seemed to inspire their own
sense of egalitarian debate (providing
you had Internet access and the
knowledge of the site, which is another
issue). A brief note should be
made regarding the differences in
constituency and content that
distinguish exhibition lists like EAT
and SotV from online organs like
Rhizome and thingist. First, the former
organs exist in a limited timespan; as
the latter are of an ongoing nature.
Also, the focus of the exhibition list is
topic-driven in contrast to the community
lists' open forum format. However,
of note is the nature of communication
in these forums, as more artists have
became more familiar with the Net.
For example, earlier events ensured a
sort of gentrification of the audience,
as primarily only the ‘initiated’ would
have the combined knowledge of the
technology and the places where the
events would occur, which acted as
a kind of cultural filter. As time has
progressed, a wider audience has
become aware of the lists [8], and
various artists have chosen to use the
lists as a form of collaborative medium
in which they test the relative sensitivity
to noise (spam). However, this
is only relevant to the nature of the
online community, which is a framework
for curatorial collaboration.

In the 1990s, the coming of the Internet and other
distributed media has produced marked cultural
effects upon technological society and the Western
world. The primary effect germane to this discussion
is the 'levelling' effect on society that the
Internet has had.

Steve Dietz's Art Entertainment
Network at the Walker Art Center [9]
is one of the few examples of a major
online exhibition which encouraged a
form of collaborative curation. Although
centralized with regard to the
hierarchical nature of the curatorial
vision -- Dietz/Walker -- the vision
for the exhibition was that of a rotating
archive. This ever-changing form
would create a curatorial model that
reflected the dynamic state of online
art practice, and served as a portal for
those wishing to see a broad spectrum
of online works. The curatorial
model for this exhibition was quite traditional
in that the selection or commission
of works was basically located
around a single curator, although
the dynamic nature of the show
allowed for a bit of interplay with the
artists and the curator. In addition, the
inclusion of the online art in a gallery
installation (presented within the concurrent
"Let's Entertain" exhibition) in
the form of a screen embedded in a
revolving door allowed the gallery visitor
to scroll (stroll?) through the
works. The recontextualization of the
works in the gallery through the creatively
positioned portal allowed some
curatorial collaboration in the repurposing
of the works with regard to their
viewing context. Both the breadth of
the exhibit and the doorway metaphor
for the gallery portal alluded to a
vision of openness and greater inclusion
that was refreshing for an institutional
show.
Although the AEN provided a relatively
open forum for new media art, it
was still closely bound to a traditional
curatorial model expanded through the
lack of physical limitations brought
about by the Internet. The other end of
the spectrum would arguably include
the works that allow free participation
within a curatorial project with only a
topical guideline as shaping metaphor.
Two process-based exhibition spaces
that hint at this procedural approach,
and thus hint at the potential for
dynamic exhibition spaces, are
Bonnie Mitchell’s "Merging
Identity" [10] and Ed Stastny’s
sito.org. [11] "Merging Identity" was a
World Wide Web art installation that
allowed individuals to collaboratively
assemble texts and images around
the metaphor of bodily experience. In
this case, the installation was
designed as a collaborative event, but
"Merging Identity," through its meta-narrative based on the central theme,
created a curatorial focus for the participating artists. Also of note was that
the installation/exhibition was archived
over time to document the changing
expressive configurations of the show.
In contrast with the AEN, "Merging"
leapt from a dynamic set of curated
works to a dynamically self-organizing
body of work based on general criteria.
Another dynamically user-driven collaborative
curatorial model lies within
the sito.org website. Similar to the
Exquisite Corpse approach made
popular by the Surrealists, the SITO
site contains a number of ongoing
works based on the general criteria of
using previously extant work in a
sense of free association. An example
of this is the GridCosm, in which a
square grid of nine squares is defined
with the center field consisting of a
‘seed’ image from which artists
reserve and upload their own additional
images until the grid is completed,
at which time the completed grid
is compiled to form the central square
of the next GridCosm level. At this
time, GridCosm has existed for over
five years, and consists of over 800
levels.
It might be wise to consider whether
this author might be conflating collaborative
projects with collaborative
curatorial practices. Two key aspects
that might help in clarifying the
issues at hand are those of institutional legitimation and artistic quantification
of works. Mitchell's work was
inscribed within the gallery of the SIGGRAPH
festival, SITO at an independent website. The objectifiying power of
the museum was somewhat present
in the case of "Merging Identities" and
its location within a gallery, but surely
not in the case of SITO. As works per
se, each site was seen more as a discrete
project than an exhibition of
works in itself. The argument of this
author is that both exhibit elements of
curatorial objectification of works in
the interstitial quantification and
archival of works at discrete periods.
What is at stake is the clarification of
creative intent in how the curator is
defined; in the case of the AEN, the
role of curator is clear, in the two
aforementioned works, the curatorial
impulse is better described as a parametric/
algorithmic guidance of a general
process.
Another example of an algorithmic
curatorial process is evident in works
that place the database in the position
of metanarrative artwork. Martin
Wattenberg’s "Idealine" at the Whitney
Museum of American Art's Artport [12]
asks artists to submit documentary information
about works into a database
for use by his JAVA applet, which takes
the resulting information and maps it
by genre, distribution and time. Users
of the applet then are offered access
to the database of submitted works.
Although this project has the potential
for open-endedness, Idealine also
exhibits aspects of traditional curatorial
metastructures that merge with
the database data to create a work
that could be perceived as artwork
and curatorial tool in that it organizes
artworks into a sort of broadly-defined
'exhibition' of sorts. However, Idealine
also could be classified as a work of
online information design rather than
a discrete 'artwork' as such; writers
such as Manovich are considering
whether there can be an art of the
database.
Another work that is not curatorial per
se, but, in a discussion [13], raised
the question whether it constituted a
form of curatorial practice, is the
RTMark Mutual Fund System. [14]
Designed as a clearinghouse for
brainstorming and dissemination
of corporate subversion projects and
their subsequent pairing with funding
and labor, this type of net.artwork is
considered by its creators more of a
fulfillment of the potential for organizing
social activism on the net. The
system acts as a database organizer,
categorizing new 'products' after their
submission to the site, at which time
there is the dissemination and promotion
of said projects in the mass
media. If you consider the decentralized
executive administrative functions
of the RTMark group proper in
relation to the organizational function
of the projects, sponsors, and workers,
one could posit that there exists a
sort of dynamic curatorial model within
the system. However, the concept
does not quite fit the idea of curation
as the screening of projects is not
necessarily art-related in scope. In
addition, RTMark does not necessarily
seek to exhibit a body or work within
an art context, but to promote actions
of civil intervention in the mass media.
Although RTMark in itself is not a
curatorial model, it presents structural
possibilities for potential net.art exhibitions
in the future.

Personal
Experiments
The projects mentioned up to this point
have been either exhibition models that
were closely related to traditional models
of extant curatorial practice, or
models that radically depart from
them, and at this time have only
explored polar opposites of our discussion.
To consider the range of possibilities
in the rethinking of curatorial practice,
I would like to present two of my
exhibitions, as well as works by independents
like Anne-Marie Schleiner.
Although my experiments in collaborative
curation have been fairly tradi-
tionalist in form, each of them has
diverged progressively with each iteration,
and frequently by accident. This
arc of experimentation ranged from the
show "Through the Looking Glass" in
Cleveland, Ohio (1999 ) [15], to the
show "(Re)distributions" [16], which
was in its 'active' phase until Feb. 1,
2002. Earlier projects are not of interest
here, as they were purely traditionalist
events that operated solely under
the usual call and response model of
juried exhibitions.

"Through the Looking Glass" was held
near Cleveland, Ohio, and lasted one
year after on the Internet. The show
began as an ordinary print exhibition
involving myself and Northeast
Ohio digital artist Jerry Domokur at the
Beachwood Center for the Arts. In
early conversation with the center's
directors while organizing the event, an
interest for a broader project was expressed,
so that the Cleveland area
could be introduced to emergent forms
of electronic art, including net.art.
At that time, Domokur and I decided
that this would be an excellent opportunity,
and a chance to shape a traditional exhibition of digital art into one
more representative of contemporary
practice through the net-topian
ideals of using communications technology as a tool for synergy between
artists.
The project, as in the case of many
that incorporate Internet strategies in
their construction, evolved greatly from
conceptualization to execution. There
is little to say about the initial stages
of the event's planning; there was only
enough funding to handle the rental of
computer and projection equipment.
And in a rather ordinary fashion, a
standard call for works went out on the
Internet. But by the end of the initial
planning stages, an interesting pattern
had emerged. Apart from work by invited
artists, such as Bookchin, Cheang,
Verostko, Rees, and nearly 300 works
garnered from the raw call, more pieces
were added by artists who entered in a
round table curatorial discussion. Most
active among them were textile artist
W. Logan Fry and mixed media printmaker
Jerry Domokur who began forwarding
information on numerous works
from around the world. In addition,
Machiko Kusahara made recommendations
from the Digital Image group in
Japan, which resulted in the acceptance
of about ten or so works from
that group, which broadened the Asian
involvement in the show immensely.
During its development, the event had
taken on a 'cellular' curatorial model in
which various individuals operating
under the central premise of the exhibition
worked semi-autonomously to
assemble works for the show. The
result was a survey of over eighty
artists and scholars’ works describing
the state of technological arts and
lighting material created on every continent
of the globe, including Antarctica.
Although the loosened curatorial model
(which was never made explicit)
worked well, the actual shape of the
body of works left something to be
desired. In casual conversation with
Steve Dietz of the Walker, a concern
about the nature of the show as survey was made manifest. The fact that
the exhibition was designed as an
introduction for the people of
Cleveland to new genres, and as
challenging of institutional boundaries
through internet-based independent
curatorial practices, created a lack
of focus. TTLG served its pedagogical
function, but did not address any
central genre, which was becoming
more important as surveys of work
were about to become more widespread.
My next experiment in curation was to center on the nascent genres
of PDA and Information Appliance
art, which took place in 2001 and
2002.
As opposed to the emergent nature of
the curatorial format that revealed itself
with the TTLG show, the PDA/IA show,
entitled "(re)distributions" was to
embody the first real conscious departure
from the traditional curatorial
process. Instead of the usual invitation/
call/response model, the plan for
acceptance accounted for the very
early development stage of most of
the pieces, and did not have a cutoff
date, but a date when works would
begin to be accepted. From that date
on, works would be judged on various
metrics until the final cutoff date, two
weeks before the end of the exhibition.
After the beginning of the exhibition,
the reality that emerged was that works
exhibiting technical virtuosity while
showing conceptual engagement with
the subject were selected.
The result of this model was mixed.
Because of technical issues, some
artists asked for my collaboration in
creating their work, as they believed
that I was creating work on these platforms
at an advanced level. In general,
my level of expertise was no better
than theirs, and the obvious breach of
ethics was problematic at best. Suffice
it to say that all such requests were
politely refused. The next oddity that
arose from this model was the fact
that, at the time for the exhibition to
begin, almost no one had actually
decided to finish his or her work or
essay. If this effect had not been corrected,
the gallery would have been
empty at the opening in the absence
of a concrete deadline. At the time of
this writing, the iterative curatorial process
has continued with only one or
two updates, primarily due to delays
caused by the cultural effects resulting
from the WTC explosions on 9/11,
2001, but is planned to continue
the full six-month process. An accretion
of works that built on extant works
in the exhibition has been presented,
but conversely, the logistical support
required for the event is higher than
that for more traditional models. This
is due to the frequent updates to the
site as well as ongoing review of
works. From this experience, this
process, while viable, is not recommended
for smaller staff.

Snow Blossom
House
Anne-Marie Schleiner's June 2001
"Snow Blossom House" [17] was an
online show dedicated to the exploration
of erotic themes as depicted in
American and Japanese electronic
media through games, popular dress-up
programs, and other media. In her
words, SBH is a "hybrid with traditional
curatorial models" in that it combines
accepted selection methods with
the informal practice of 'collecting
links,' access to downloads and the
submission of informal reviews. [18]
The exhibition is therefore reflective
of both previously extant museological
practice translated to the Web
and the Do-It-Yourself (DIY)
aesthetic of the personal website. The
merging of conventional methods with
commonly used web authoring practices
shows the influence of the personal
website on curatorial practice;
on the web, "everyone can be a curator,"
to paraphrase Schleiner. While the
author’s and Schleiner’s projects incorporate
experiments with time, compilation and collective curation, there is
still a centralized sense of curatorial
vision within these projects and a
resultant fetishization of the body of
data as objet d'art. However, the
experiments in modifying the traditional
curatorial process have resulted in
viable exhibitions, and may be seen as
having the potential for further experimentation.

The Internet has caused a proliferation
of exhibition opportunities for artists
working in the electronic genres, and
through the early vision of the Internet
as a collaborative workspace, the possibility
for establishing varying
degrees of collaboration in technological
art curation seems evident.
However, the issues surrounding a
work's legitimacy that are imposed
upon any online show avoiding the
use of traditional curatorial models
by the power structures that are
associated with traditionalist museological
practice, create varying levels of
opportunity for that legitimacy. Much of
the fostering of acceptance of online
exhibitions within the larger culture
is dependent on the media savvy
of the curator/organizer and the ability
to address the mass media aspects of
the online world. In addition, a certain
amount of audience targeting in order
to start engaging with the potential
audience through a certain level of
thematic/topical focus is also important
for a larger acceptance for a body of
work. These aspects of online curatorial
practice, both traditional and experimental,
are intertwined with any
attempt at creating a novel form of
gallery practice.
As experimentation continues, the difference
between collaborative art,
database collection/visualization, communal
activity, and more traditional
curatorial practices often becomes
slim. As various artists and practitioners
attempt to create focal points for
the exposition of creative processes,
these genres will likely intertwine in
inseparable, yet discernable ways,
such as Idealine's method of database-driven curation. There will also
undoubtedly be more independent
offerings that incorporate experimental
methods, such as Schleiner’s and my
own work, as well as process-driven
projects, such as "Merging Identity"
and SITO. One of the key questions
regarding these future aesthetic
engagements will be the context in
which they are seen by the larger art
world, as to their legitimation and perceived
mode of representation (work,
exhibition, database, etc).
If institutions like the Whitney, Walker,
Guggenheim, and so on continue their
investiture into the online and hybrid
worlds, their increased participation will
reinscribe the agendas of traditionalist
curatorial and museological practices
into genres such as net.art. This will
create certain challenges for the nontraditional
curator, but will also not prevent
the further exploration of atypical
curatorial practices from taking place.
The development of independent curatorial
practice in light of the emergent
digital communications environment
will undoubtedly create an experimental
compliment that traditional institutions
are bound to adopt -- if the
emergence of various independent
curation models (such as collaborative
ones discussed herein) become more
widespread. The bottom line is that
since larger institutions are adopting
new curatorial (though more traditionalist)
models for the acquisition of
technological art, the relationship
between artist and curator will be
bound to vary. It will be interesting to
observe what shape that variance will
take, and how it reflects the nature of
the online society.

Notes:

[1] In the early 1990s, I had a conversation
with my mother (who exhibited in many of
these shows) that related a question
I once asked about who ‘got to pick’ the
art in an exhibition.